


Tunnel Vision

by PenelopePenniworth



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Death, Drug Abuse, Drug Dealing, Drugs, F/M, Ian Gallagher & Mandy Milkovich Friendship, Ian Gallagher and Mandy Milkovich are Best Friends, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mentioned Ian Gallagher, Minor Character Death, Shameless, preface?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 19:14:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11561571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopePenniworth/pseuds/PenelopePenniworth
Summary: Growing up, Mickey had always had tunnel vision for his little sister Mandy; that was nothing new. But who knew his tunnel vision could fit one more.Warning: Mentions death(read notes before continuing on!)





	Tunnel Vision

**Author's Note:**

> So, I know someone is going to mention this in the comments based on the tags, but should you continue reading, there is no established Ian/Mickey relationship YET, so there isn't a Mickey/Ian/Mandy relationship...YET (I feel like I should mention Mickey/Mandy is purely platonic, only bro-sis relationship). This "preface", "oneshot", whatever you want to call it, currently establishes Mickey and Mandy's relationship as you will see and was written to develop into the three and then Gallavich in a multi-chapter fic. I do want to make this a full fic, but because my primary focus is my other Gallavich story "Finding Me" and the full story is most likely going to be pretty complex (at least for me to write), this most likely won't be updated very quickly as it is only being written to satiate my need for raging angsty, sad character background and angst in general that I can't find on here soooo because this preface/oneshot/thing can stand on its own too, I'm gonna post it, kay? Thanks for reading. Enjoy. lol

It had always been Mickey and Mandy for as long as Mickey knew. 

Ever since the little shit was born on their living room floor in their rundown house that was nowhere fit for another child, let alone an infant, Mickey had always looked out for her. He wasn't sure why. 

Maybe it was because, up until Mandy, he was the youngest Milkovich. He had four older brothers that took care of him...kind of. Family was number one when it came to the Milkoviches. The kids had each other's backs and would fuck up or literally kill whoever fucked with any one of them. They just had unorthodox ways of showing it to each other.

With Mandy, it was different. The brothers didn’t know exactly how to treat a little girl, having grown up in a rough, patriarchal home, so they just let her be. But, to Mickey, she was like this precious cargo no one could touch. While his age still fell in the single digits, he was always by his mother’s side, helping her take care of Mandy. Whenever Mandy cried, he’d be right there with her ratty green bear-thing - that was passed down from one Milkovich to the next and was missing an eye - to calm her down. Whenever she laughed, he was the one causing it, making silly faces, tickling her toes, or pretending to die dramatically when she threw stuffed animals at him (he learned to cut that out when she started throwing harder objects), she enjoyed the fuck out of that one.

Or maybe he was that attached because Mandy was the spitting image of his mother and he loved his mother to death.

As they grew older, Mickey slowly transitioned from being Mommy’s assistant to “Mommy”. Without the affection that normal mothers would show because he’s not a pussy ass fairy. He’s a motherfucking Milkovich and Milkoviches are tough as shit.

By no means had their lives been cupcakes, sprinkles, and rainbows. It never even once came anywhere close. The household income came from thefts, drug and weapon dealing, prostitution, and a whole bunch of other illegal shit for Christ’s sake. But he was content for a while. Then Terry, their father who barely ever deserved that title (and sure as shit doesn’t now), started drinking more, got into more drugs other than just selling them, especially now that the amount of money they brought home was barely enough to feed a family of 8 and still keep a roof over their heads. He became angrier. Nothing in the world seemed to be the way he wanted, barely anything anyone did was right, and he would take it out on anyone who was close enough. And, with that, their mother followed suit. It wasn't that she hadn't dabbled in it before then, because she definitely did, but with this toxic love-hate relationship they fell into, she did it with the intentions of getting away from the abuse Terry began inflicting primarily on her as well as the kids (not Mandy though; Mickey kept her away from that), even if only for the couple hours that the high lasted. But, it soon wasn’t enough.

When Mandy wanted mom, mom turned her away; she started to see she only had Mickey. Mickey still loved both of them, so it was hard to deal with the separation. It wasn't his mother's fault; he knew that, but she didn't. He couldn’t imagine what was going on in the house when all the boys and Terry were out handling business and Mandy was left at home with her.

Their mother spent more than half the day high or drunk. She spent less and less time with the family and more time holed up in the extra room they had in the house in which they just threw a bunch of random shit in over the years. Eventually, she just stopped coming out. Too many days had passed before Mickey had used his newly acquired skill to pick the lock on the door and it was the worst mistake he had ever made in his life and he’d made enough in his lifetime at that point to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. 

Mickey had seen plenty of dead bodies before. It came with the family business and even then he was the one that caused a good number of these deaths. After the first three, he didn’t even blink an eye. His skin no longer crawled. He no longer was "too dirty" to scrub his skin raw when he showered. He was no longer haunted by the look on the victim’s faces in his sleep.

That was until he and his brothers found their mother laying in her own filth—piss and shit and who knows what the fuck else—on one of the boys’ old twin mattress, a needle hanging from her arm, extremities blue, eyes grey on yellow and glassed over and unresponsive, vomit dried around her mouth and on her clothes, and the smell. Fuck. It was the most putrid smell that permeated the room and had started getting through the house. 

Mickey couldn’t tell you how long she had been like that because he wasn’t a forensic scientist, but mostly because he refused to think about it. He threw up right then and there and his stomach churned furiously, was so adamant to be empty, but he had to keep the rest down until they had removed her body from the house and buried her where no one else besides them would know and then he had to tell 14 -year-old Mandy that mom left them. 

Mandy didn’t care. 

She wrote her off so long ago and Mickey should have been relieved that he didn’t need to go into any more details to create a structured lie, but all he wanted to do was cry. He didn’t. None of the brothers did. Because they are fucking Milkoviches.

From that day on, Mickey hated his mother. She left them. So suddenly. To a much better place than where they were for the next three years and he felt stuck. They had nowhere else to go and it fucking sucked way more than the word let on. Nothing changed (except they never entered that room ever again). If anything, it became twice as miserable because, for some reason that made as much as sense as Joey becoming an advocate for fucking animal endangerment or some shit, their mother’s death affected Terry too. He was actually upset she was gone and because Mandy looked like the younger version of her a lot of the anger, frustration, sadness, was aimed at her when he was home and drunk. So, Mandy had to stay in her room and come out only when necessary or stay out of the house. She did most of the latter to Mickey’s dismay. He couldn’t protect her as much as he wanted to, but Mandy grew up to be a tough fucker with a thick skin just as much as her brothers were (maybe even more so), so he wasn’t too worried. But that didn't mean he completely wasn't.

So, for 19 years of his life, his tunnel vision was only always set on Mandy; he did everything for her. Himself and Mandy because who else would've looked after Mandy, if not him? 

But, that was until a certain redhead befriended his sister and was introduced to him as her boyfriend.


End file.
